Started writing in March, 2005, so almost 20 years ago.

Had additional people also to join in writing top level posts as well as commenting. Over Three Years of Blogging by Somervell County Salon

2007- Navel-Gazing Saturday Morning-Why I Write This Blog

Somervell County Salon has been up since March of 2005 and the main reason I started it is that I wanted to write about things that interested me about living here, in a mainly political context. Like, I wanted to write about county commissioner and city council meetings, as well as national politics. I figure that’s the value of a local blog but it might also be a roadblock to a huge number of eyeballs reading. That’s okay with me, because 1. I write what I want to when I want to and 2. I’m not trying to be the be-all and end-all of blogs, just one writer with a viewpoint in Somervell County. I can’t speak for the other 3 writers here, who may and probably *will* have different reasons for writing. I might get into my cynicism about what must change for our democracy to truly work, but suffice it for now to say that I cannot NOT speak about some things that are important to me because I strongly believe in the maxim that he who is silent is assumed to consent.

2009-Over 4 Yehttps://salon.glenrose.net/default.asp?view=plink&id=10848ars of Blogging -The Blog Somervell County Salon (Glen Rose)

Thinking Ahead-the Direction of Somervell County Salon for 2011

2014 – Somervell County Salon- Over 9 Years and Still Going!

Back in 2011, my plans were to scale back going to meetings and recording them for posting on the internet. There are plenty of sources for news and opinion in Somervell County, 2 newspapers and other blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, you name it. What seemed more important to me was that people could go directly to a government entity and look at the agendas, minutes, see associated documents, listen to audio, see video (if someone did it as Paul Harper is doing for the Somervell County Hospital District), in other words, be able to get information for themselves DIRECTLY from the source. And, for a lot of the government entities, that’s absolutely 1. I’ve been able to listen, for example, to Somervell County commissioners meetings when I had an interest (such as about the SR20 debacle). I firmly believe that unless a citizen is willing to spend a little time looking at, reading, analyzing information FOR HIM OR HER SELF, he or she is at the mercy of an incomplete presentation of what actually happened.

Somervell County Salon for 2019

Every year about this time I like to take stock of the direction of this blog. I started this blog back in 2005, mostly as a way to express myself on political matters and also to be involved with local government. I didn’t do too much with it last year. To be blunt, I was just kind of worn out, and soured completely on the integrity of some local government entities. Couple that with having a crook for president, and I didn’t muster up much desire to post. Was also a little exhausted to see how many people accepted the level of corruption from the Trump administration without question. Part of that changed in December of 2018 for reasons I will no doubt talk about in depth at a later time. In any event, I’ve had my blog site up now for going on 14 years.

I’ve had, as most people know who are familiar with me, a strong interest in local politics for quite some years, including video recording or audio recording meetings and putting them up for others to see or hear. I strongly believe that elected government officials should be accountable to those that pay their salaries or where taxpayer money is being spent and the more sunshine that can be shone, the better. And our Texas constitution is even better on freedom of speech than the US constitution.Our Texas government encourages people to use the public information act to be informed, and there is a set of laws and rules regarding how open meetings should be conducted. 

At some point early last year I quit Facebook … again… I didn’t like the practices of Facebook, seemed (and continue to seem) shady and dishonest, and I didn’t want to be part of that. Have felt all the better for it. 

Plans for Somervell County Salon Blog for 2020

Yes. I do this almost every year and put up things I plan to do. Most of them I haven’t done. 

But going to mention what I might do for the next year. First, blogs have, for the most part, gone out of favor as mega-sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram have taken over. I still want my own little corner of the internet to talk about what I want and I feel the same way as when I coded and began this site years ago. I”m a woman with political opinions and ideas, and also like the idea of keeping up on local government and other events in Somervell County. At one point a couple of years ago I thought I would put up a message board but ran into some technical roadblocks, mostly involving php 7.x. My current blog uses classic ASP which I have never upgraded. Yeah, it’s kind of spaghetti code but at this point it’s like an old familiar friend that I have been coding with and tweaking for years, and I’m not interested in changing. I may again look into a message board where I put the blog on an interior page. I also thought at one point I might put up a streaming video site. Doing so would be a huge amount of work; I prefer to say that I have other projects that interest me more that take up less of my time, so will probably never do that, although technically it’s feasible. 

I have been off Facebook now for at least 2 years. I left it a long time ago but then, due to a project I have on an unrelated subject, went back to keep a Facebook login to maintain a project page. I finally had enough, deleted my account for good,  and went to use a different software option to keep up with family and friends which has worked very well. Hub still uses FB and sometimes shares some of the posts that are on this blog with his FB audience, which is completely up to his discretion and opinions about what he wants to re-post, if anything. For me, I feel really good having deleted Facebook and am not interested in joining back up for any reason. At any rate, saying that when I write blog posts, and I probably write the majority of them here, I don’t do it for any other audience than those who may come here. 

The posts are quite often opinion mixed with substantial facts, like video or audio. I believe strongly that if anyone wants to form an opinion about whether something is 1, viewing video or hearing audio, for example,, is an excellent way to form an opinion. I think, based on having the blog for so many years, that realistically, just because I have posted a video excerpt doesn’t mean that every single person on that post has viewed it. But they could. It’s kind of lazy to call items “fake news” as Trump regularly does; I believe he hopes that people will not actually look for themselves to see if what he says is 1 or not. At any rate, again, although I very often have my own opinion on what I believe about a certain news item, anyone is encouraged to look or hear for themselves, and if you think I got it wrong, send me a message or make a comment and call me out on it, within the comment rules. 

By salon

SCS-Somervell County Salon has been a news/opinion site for years. Owned and run by local Somervell resident female who goes by the name of Salon online.See ABOUT https://scsalon.org/bl/index.php/about-scs/

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